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茄子直播 cognitive scientist livestreams daily meditation lessons during COVID-19

Man meditates while kneeling in his living room
(photo by visualspace via Getty Images)

How do our minds deal with the increasing complexity of the modern world? How can we train ourselves to face life鈥檚 challenges? How do we stay connected in a world full of distractions and alienation?

Such questions are at the centre of the University of Toronto鈥檚 John Vervaeke鈥檚 academic work 鈥 not to mention  鈥 and have never been more relevant than during COVID-19.

 

An assistant professor, teaching stream, in the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the cognitive science program at University College, Vervaeke (left) recently launched a new series of videos in response to the pandemic. Every weekday morning, he livestreams a short lesson about meditation followed by a brief silent meditation period.

Arts & Science writer Jovana Jankovic recently spoke to Vervaeke about mindfulness and meditation, particularly during times of stress and anxiety.


What are the biggest misconceptions about meditation?

One is that meditation is about achieving a kind of relaxation akin to sleepiness 鈥 that it should make your body and mind cloudy and dull, and your consciousness fade away. That鈥檚 not the kind of relaxation you want in meditation. You want a type of relaxation that enhances your sense of stability and your sensitivity. Meditation is not a vacation, it鈥檚 an education.

The other misconception is that you鈥檙e not meditating unless your mind goes wide open and blank. That鈥檚 exactly the wrong attitude. Every time you catch yourself in distraction and come back to your meditative focus, you鈥檙e actually building the mindfulness muscle. It鈥檚 like doing reps in weight training.

Why did you decide to do this series of morning sessions during the pandemic?

I think our culture in general is going through a meaning crisis in which we lack a sense of how we are connected to ourselves, to each other, to the world; how much we matter, how much we鈥檙e in touch with reality, how much we鈥檙e overcoming self-deception, how much we鈥檙e affording wisdom.

If the meaning crisis is a fundamental sense of disconnection, the COVID crisis certainly exacerbates that. People feel very disconnected from their life, disconnected from the world, disconnected from each other. So, while it鈥檚 good to develop a mindfulness practice in general, I think it鈥檚 especially pertinent right now.

You say that frequency of meditation is more important than length of sessions. Could you tell us more about that?

Continuity of practice is more important than quantity, but that doesn鈥檛 mean the quantity is irrelevant. If you鈥檙e trying to learn something new and you just stay inside your comfort zone, you鈥檙e not challenging yourself, which is how learning happens.

So, when you鈥檙e sitting for meditation, if you only sit as long as it鈥檚 comfortable, you don鈥檛 get into what psychologists call the 鈥渮one of proximal development.鈥 That鈥檚 where you learn new things. You have to keep sitting when it鈥檚 challenging and you have to use the principles and practices you鈥檙e taught to keep going.

But if you say, "Well, I can鈥檛 sit for a full 15 minutes, so I won鈥檛 sit at all," that will erode your practice. If you can honestly say to yourself that you can only sit for five minutes, then sit for five minutes. It鈥檚 not always sufficient, but it鈥檚 certainly better than nothing.

What are some quick and easy tips for beginners who are just trying meditation?

People try to get into a posture that is free from unpleasant sensations or discomfort. But you鈥檒l never get there. I鈥檝e been meditating for 20 years and I鈥檝e never found such a thing. That鈥檚 really important to remember.

And centring your mind doesn鈥檛 mean just focusing your attention. It means stepping back and looking at your mind rather than looking through it. The metaphor I use is my glasses: I look through my glasses all day long, but if they are full of gunk, what I have to do is actually step back and look at them.

You need to try to do the same thing with your mind: Step back and look at its patterns and processes. And don鈥檛 frame meditation as instantly getting your mind to go blank. You have to learn to sit until your mind settles.

Finally, you need both a meditative practice and a contemplative practice. We use those terms as if they鈥檙e synonyms, but they鈥檙e not. To go back to my analogy, if meditation is like stepping back and looking at your glasses, how do you know if you鈥檝e spotted a distortion or a defect in your glasses? You have to put them back on, right?

If you put them back on and you see better, that鈥檚 a contemplative aspect of the practice. Can you see through what was previously illusion into reality? This relates to work I did with my former student Leo Ferraro, who was a TA and an alumnus in the cognitive science program as well as my co-author for a book chapter called 鈥淩eformulating the Mindfulness Construct.鈥

Cognitive science is perhaps not as well-known as psychology or neuroscience. What is it?

In many ways, cognitive science is close to philosophy and particularly ancient philosophy like that of Socrates and Plato. It鈥檚 about studying the mind and its relationship to reality in a very comprehensive manner.

In the modern world, we have a discipline that studies the brain and that鈥檚 neuroscience. We have computer science, which studies artificial intelligence 鈥 that鈥檚 about systems that can solve problems and do information processing. Or we have psychologists, who study human behaviour. We might go to a linguist who studies how we communicate through grammar and syntax with each other. Or we might be concerned with culture, so we might go to an anthropologist for that.

Those things are not isolated. They interact with and affect each other. And cognitive science gets all of those other disciplines to insightfully talk to each other as they study the mind in their different ways. It鈥檚 sort of a very powerful bridging discourse between them.  

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